Seretse and Ruth in Serowe

Perhaps this decision is a challenge of sorts to see if the Mmegi staff member who changed my Seretse and Ruth headline to Sir Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams is still in business and still insistent that eighteen years after they were married, Sir Seretse was still being accompanied by a mere companion.  I had asked that Mmegi apologise for this offensive and obviously ridiculous statement - for statement it was - and had asked it to clarify that I had not been responsible for it.

At the time of writing, however, I have had no assurance from Mmegi that it intends to make such an apology and as a result, am obliged to express my own regrets on its behalf, and on my own, for a blunder -  it cannot possibly be called a mistake - of such breath taking stupidity. Why anyone would decide that my submitted headline, ‘Seretse and Ruth’ had to be so corrected is baffling. Perhaps it was felt to be over familiar. But newspaper columns are personal contributions - so I have always felt free to refer to Seretse and Ruth, as they then were to many people in the years before his death in 1980.